


The Ostroff Centre

by lourryspineapples



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Anal Sex, Chaptered, Crazy, Fear, Fluff, Love, Love Story, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Medical, Mental, Mental Institutions, Nurses, Ostroff, Phobia, Romance, Sex, Smut, and present lets be real, androphobia, centre, explicit - Freeform, harry - Freeform, harry might be able to help him through it, hes fucked up, hl, institution, larry - Freeform, larry stylinson - Freeform, lots of fluff, louis - Freeform, louis has a complicated past, lourry, mature - Freeform, ostroff centre, slow buildup
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:03:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5161361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lourryspineapples/pseuds/lourryspineapples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Louis was crazy, or maybe the walls were closing in. Either way, he was sure that rooms 205 and 211 shouldn’t have been opposite each other; but maybe that’s what made it so exciting.</p><p>(or the one where Louis and Harry are in a mental institution and Louis is intrigued by almost everything about the curly haired boy)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> this story will have mature themes so please be aware of that before you begin reading...hope you enjoy xxx
> 
> i'm really quite proud of this fic and have spent a lot of time on it so please don't leave negative comments or post it anywhere else without permission :)

It started at three in the morning. Louis stared through the crack in his wall as hordes of people rushed to escort a new patient across the hallway. Shivers rushed down his spine as he caught a glimpse of the boy. He felt faint.  
His posture screamed of his devious intentions, bent over and shrugged against the doorframe. Hair messily swept and clothes fitting much too tight around the pelvis, the boy was quickly hidden from sight as the door of his room was forcibly slammed shut; the sound echoing throughout the corridor.  
Louis shakily took a breath as he wiped his clammy hands across the fabric of his sweater, numb from the frightening sensation he’d endured. Awkwardly clambering into his bed, framed by few simple metal poles, he shut his eyes and desperately prayed to drift into nothingness.

-

“Two Benzodiazepines.”  
The hand that placed the medication into Louis’ palm was cold and stiff. The morning brought nothing but an uneaten bowl of cereal and enough pills for each grain of sand along the Doncaster shore. Swallowing both with haste, Louis quickly scrambled across the room towards the familiar corner and sat facing the window.  
Past the stone fencing and beyond the stretching miles of farmland was a glimpse of the ocean. A tiny slither in the distance, but enough to calm the mind and remind that there was another world; far from the charades of the people trapped within these lifeless walls.  
His peace was soon disrupted.  
“Lewis?”  
He refused to turn his head.  
“I need to talk to you in my office.”  
Stiffly raising from the floor, Louis solemnly followed the women out of the pharmaceutical department. Arriving at the counselling offices, Louis hugged his jumper closer to his chest as he entered the room; feeling uneasy in the confines of such an intimidating space.  
“Sit.”  
His counsellor instructed with a harsh undertone, having given up on Louis’ case years ago. Seating himself on an expensive leather couch, Louis felt his stomach flip as a large stack of files appeared within his line of vision. Louis Troy Austin, they’d say. Born December 24th. Admitted for severe Androphobia on October 2nd, 2006 at the age of 15.  
Facts were safe. They were the basis of institutions and ground breaking scientific discoveries, but they were faulty. Facts don’t reveal emotions, or feelings, or intention, or hurt, or pain, or sacrifice. They claim to deliver the truth, yet they mask any trace of actuality.  
A sudden cough snapped Louis from his drifting thoughts, and forced him to raise his head to meet the harsh gaze of the women seated opposite her perfectly straightened desk.  
“It appears that an alternate method of treatment has been suggested by my superiors, but it will require a harsher involvement in our facility and consent on your own behalf.”  
Lifeless eyes stared down at Louis’ appearance, judging him for all his worth before lazily returning towards the legal document within her grasp. Handing the lengthy file toward Louis, he skimmed the pages quickly before reaching the end; signing without hesitation. Anything to avoid the medication; it fucked with his head.  
Sighing in content of the easily accepted contract, the women proceeded to dial the main office and converse with a hushed tone the results of the past few minutes. Hanging up abruptly, she smiled falsely before excusing herself and asking that Louis remain seated during her absence.  
Louis’ silence was taken positively.  
Relaxing immediately following her departure, Louis took his first real look at the space he was seated in. Bookshelves lining the edges of the room, filled with an assortment of phycological texts and the odd romance novel.  
Everything about the psychologists who worked within these walls seemed fake; it was no secret that they returned to the outside world following their required working hours, most likely to tell of the terrifying abnormalities they’d seen that day.  
It had been years since Louis had considered himself stable. He’d grown up and matured in an environment which was too secluded and often caused vivid delusions. The walls were just too damn white to remain in focus.  
Or at least, that’s what Louis reassures himself with.  
The minutes passed by as seconds would. From being admitted, Louis had since lost his sense of time and happenings; maybe in a different life he’d have taken note of the increasingly long time the women was taking.  
Shifting upon the seat, Louis’ eyes raked over the coffee stains littering the table opposite himself. Caffeine was his muse in earlier days; a passion which has since been relinquished. What he’d give to be able to brew a cup of his Mum’s finest, Yorkshire being a family classic.  
Louis swore he could hear multiple sets of footsteps gaining upon the entrance to the office, stopping abruptly at the unnecessarily sized feature doors framing the left side of the room.  
Swinging open with such elegance and simplicity, Louis was almost immediately aware that it wasn’t the women from previously who had just entered the room. His eyes were downcast in a flash.  
He firstly saw the boots. Oversized, massively oversized and desperately in need of maintenance. Beads of sweat formed along his brow as Louis’ breaths became more frantic. He knew. He didn’t need to glance upwards, he simply knew.  
Chest rattling with oncoming nausea, Louis desperately attempted to regain stability. His mind had him convinced that his options were singular. Run, until you reach the fucking end of the earth.  
He moved with immaculacy, dodging the obstacles littered throughout the over furnished office. His mind racing and eyes still refusing to raise even a centimetre above ankle height.  
Swinging around the final chair of the office, Louis was immensely pleased with his progress; allowing himself a smirk as he finally registered the shouts echoing throughout the halls adjacent.  
He’d obviously taken his athletic abilities for granted, as his body suddenly halting to pay attention to a foreign touch on the uppermost part of his arm.  
Firm.  
His head began to spin.  
Soft.  
His breathing escalated far beyond a normal capacity.  
Innocent.  
His stomach lurched coercively inside his abdomen.  
Louis’ mind was clouded; unable to register anything from his reliant four senses, he placed all ability onto his vision.  
He glanced up.  
The green was piercing, the stubble menacing. Hair perfectly tangled into beautiful locks and swirls; also brown, very brown. Eyebrows furrowed and mouth downturned as he reached his arms out. Spindling, they wrapped firmly around Louis’ waist as he finally registered something other than his sight.  
He was falling. At an incredible rate and merely inches from knocking himself unconscious against the hardwood flooring currently laminating the office.  
Before the spots appeared and began to cloud his perception, Louis lay helplessly in his arms, unable to fight against the lips eagerly approaching the side of Louis’ face.  
Quietly, as to not place any more anxiousness upon the boy with a terrified expression plastered across his paling face, the whisper echoed and rattled through Louis entirety.  
In those last fleeting moments, the consonants and vowels seemingly came together to form a distorted message which flashed before Louis’ very eyes.  
“You”  
“Alright”  
“You”  
“Babe”  
“Alright”  
“You”  
“You alright”  
“You”

“You alright, babe?”

-

End Chapter One.


	2. Midnight Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis and Harry actually meet, for real this time..

Solitary was familiar. It was easy to slip into a routine of eating, sleeping and barely existing; it was, however much harder to slip out of this encompassing pattern of depression.  
That exact description now applied directly to Louis as he helplessly scrambled down the bleak hallways of the institution, sunlight barely reaching the depths of its hallowed ceilings and cemented flooring. His hands were held without consent behind his back by the older women leading him towards his room, much too experienced in the field to allow Louis to simply swing his arms as he pleased.  
There was always _such_ a danger with mentally ill people. They’re just _so_ incredibly unstable that the government decided to lock them all up and restrict their access to the world. By this point in his life, Louis resented almost everyone and everything.  
He’d spent three days alone, yet it passed by just as quickly or slowly as everything seemed to nowadays. Louis was drowning in nothingness.  
Blank and saddened faces greeted his eyes as Louis lifelessly flickered across the patients locked away in their rooms; allowed barely more than a bed, toilet and small window granting incredible views of the hallway. Sunlight was very dangerous for sick people. 

Louis hoped he’d never turn into this, a shell of who he’d been before admittance. His illness took its toll, of course, yet his real decline began within these walls; he suspects it began just as his family stopped visiting for good.  
Had his eyes not grown so careless and had his mind remained as sharp as it once was, maybe Louis would have noticed that it was strange to be the only male within an ever expanding institution. But the hazy view in which the world was presented to him blocked out any such deductions. It was probably the medication, if Louis’ being honest.  
Arriving at his room, Louis took one glance at the room opposite his and visibly shuddered. Fear, strangely, was an emotion he hadn’t faced fully in a while. He suspected it would be making regular occurrences from now on.  
As the lady muttered a few words towards him, swinging his metal door shut and locking it with regretful eyes, Louis’ mind was already submerged with thoughts of the boy from before.  
He hadn’t seen a man in years, the mere though of it sending tingles down his spine and causing frantic palpitations of his heart. It was part of his treatment; withdrawal from the things that made him mad.  
He had to be normal. He needed to be.  
His mind was swirling in fear and confusion, unsure why another male had been admitted into the facility when he was promised to never have to face another whilst in the institution.  
It was on the bloody contract he signed.  
The contract…

_BOOM_

The lighting always gave a frightening click as the giant lamps illuminating the hallway switched off for the evening. It was time for the night guards to begin their shift, and for anyone with a decent state of mind to get far, far away.  
It was pitch black as Louis pulled back the covers of his makeshift bed; clenching and grinding his teeth as he lay in silence.  
Unlike the stories, there are no haunting screams or frightening clatters through the night in places such as Ostroff; most of those are in the patient’s heads. Luckily this allows Louis a good night’s sleep for the most part; however tonight would not be one of those nights.  
Louis swore only seconds had passed when he heard the voice, palms immediately sweating and body seizing up in fear. 

“Psst,”

The voice was deep, rumbling through Louis’ entirety. Louis immediately felt queasy, imagining the multiple situations in which this could end horribly. He was just considering first degree murder when the voice echoed through his room again, this time uttering an actual sentence.

“Cheeks, are you asleep?

He knew who the voice belonged too, meaning the situation shouldn’t have made him as curious as it did. Yet he inexplicably found himself wanting to be able to converse with this man; this strange boy who had shown up unexpectedly in his life, only to have himself faint like a maiden in his arms and spend three days in solitary because of it. Louis’ life had never been so exciting in all the years he’d been locked away; despite the crippling anxiety and fear he was obviously being crushed under at that moment.

His voice squeaked and was an octave or two from his normal tone as Louis attempted his reply, seriously considering first degree murder as a better option in that moment his voice broke. 

“No”

It was measly, barely reaching across his room to the one opposite his, but he knew the boy had heard it when a menacing laugh came in response. It lasted all of two seconds, yet Louis had immediately taken to hiding under his covers, just as a precaution of course; he wasn’t that much of a wimp.

“Cute,”

The reply was unexpected, to say the least, as Louis slowly removed the thin blanket from his head and peered through his small window to where the boy would be, had he been standing outside his own window and not tucked up ready to sleep. 

“Sorry about the fall, cheeks.” 

Louis barely had time to process the sentence before he caught his second glimpse of the boy, barely a silhouette in the nighttime. Somehow granting him an aura of peace, the unfocused and hazy view allowed less fear to register in Louis’ mind and was probably the reason he was able to string together a sentence without passing out. Probably.

“It’s fine.”

Louis hated how weak he sounded, completely convinced that the boy would think it easy to be able to take advantage of the situation. Murder of the first degree kind crossed his mind.

“Look at you, facing your fears already!”

Louis registered a teasing tone in his voice, yet it had been so long since his last proper conversation that he was sure it was actually malice, it _had_ to be. 

“And they told me it would be hard to get you to open up!”

And if Louis’ lips curled slightly upwards at that statement, no one had to know. He loved proving those clinical bastards wrong.

“I’m Harry,”

The boy continued to carry the mainly one sided conversation, something which Louis was immensely grateful for; unsure how long he’d last having to actively participate, his stomach had only just calmed down and his palms were yet to stop sweating.

“It fucking stinks in here, what the hell,”

Louis giggled softly to himself imaging the boy stopping his nose and searching for the foul stench in his tiny cubicle of a room. Apparently Harry had heard his tiny response, and continued to talk Louis through his ‘great search for the stench, 2016’. Louis' giggles may or may not have increased in volume at this point, regretfully they were his whole faced scrunched ones; the very worst kind.

“Are you serious? After all that..”

“What?” 

Louis couldn’t believe the strength behind his own voice, it had been years since he’d talked so freely despite how short the exclamation was.

“There’s a shit in my toilet, and I swear to _god_ it’s not mine,”

“Wait, really?”

Louis knew some of the guards and nurses took advantage of the convenience of the Ostroff’s multiple toilets, but as he tried to utter a sentence to explain this to Harry he found himself unable to get past the first word.

Thank god Harry moved on..

“It literally smells like shit in here,”

“There is a shit in there,”

“I -“

Harry barely begins his sentence before his laugh is echoing down the halls of the institution, causing multiple patients to shush them quite vigorously. Louis can’t find it in himself to care.  
He was mesmerised at the sound currently being excluded from Harry, it was beautiful, quite like honey as it ripped through the boy. Pure and simple yet so loud and extravagant. Louis doesn’t think he’s ever heard something so incredible.  
The fact that he’d been the one to expel it from him was something else entirely..

“Your laugh,” Louis starts unexpectedly, louder than he’d realised too as Harry’s bellows immediately begin to quiet and slow. Louis can feel the pressure on himself to make this moment count, trying desperately to push for a sentence.

“I-I-It-It-It-s”

Louis is mad, mostly at himself but also at the world for making him this way. If he could only get through his fucking sentences maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess; if he could only function like a proper fucking human being.  
He’s also disappointed. It’s been so long since something so incredible has happened to him, Louis doubts if something this good will ever come around again.

“It’s alright.”   
“It’s beautiful.”

They speak at exactly the same time; so much so that it’s almost haunting. But just as Louis feels the pride of getting through his sentence, the embarrassment at what he’d just uttered sends flames straight to his cheeks and he can feel them heat. 

“You’re too cute cheeks,”

Harry giggles, fucking _giggles_ from across the hallway. Surely, men aren’t supposed to giggle in such a harmless way, right? Louis finds himself reassessing a few things, before reminding himself that he can’t actually see any part of Harry, and realising that that is the only reason for his monetarily blindness to his condition.

“You cold?” 

The question was unexpected, but reminds Louis that it is currently the middle of Winter, and his blankets are currently thrown in a misshapen heap at the bottom of his bed. 

“Yeah.”

“You should go to sleep cheeks, I’ll see you in the morning. Wouldn’t want you catching a cold.”

It’s odd how Louis felt a tinge of disappointment at the thought, this whole conversation had been exciting if nothing else; he hated the thought of never having the courage to talk to Harry again. It was worth a fucking cold.

“No.”

“Wow, you’re such a rebel babe.”

Louis’ heart began to thud faster at that. _No_. Not that word.

“Please, don’t.”

Louis’ voice was shy again, his palms sweaty and his stomach queasy. Sleeping sounded great right now, it sounded fucking amazing.

“Don’t what? Call you babe?”

Louis’ throat was closing up, his head beginning to spin.  
Thank god Harry had realised his mistake.

“I’m really sorry cheeks, never again.”

“Cheeks.” Louis muttered softly, willing desperately for himself to get a grip on the situation and barely registering his own words as a result.

“It suits you better anyways. Your cheekbones are fucking sexy.”

Louis let out a small laugh. It wasn't much, but considering the situation, it was incredible. 

“Thanks.”

“Do I get a compliment in return?”

“Nope.”

Louis popped his p’s as he always used to as a child, barely noticing until it was too late. His cheeks began to warm again. 

“Too cute, cheeks, too cute.” Harry muttered softly to himself, flushing his toilet before moving out of Louis’ view; surprisingly to his disappointment.

“Night cheeks, I’ll see you at brekkie, better not faint on me this time.”

“Night H.”

Louis knew he’d struggle to personally identify Harry. His name is one of the biggest giveaways that he was talking and associating himself with another male.  
Definitely not the _biggest_ give away though; Louis nearly giggles as he looks down at himself before snapping out of it. He isn’t fucking eight years old, he swears.

He’s quite proud of himself as he falls asleep with only a slight lightheadedness. It was a fucking start, he guesses.

\- 

End Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry that my chapters are so short!! it's my vision for the story to have each major scene as a chapter (not always but most of the time) so it just kind of happens (hah)
> 
> hope you enjoyed and please leave a kudos or comment if you liked it, it gives me motivation to write more ☀︎

**Author's Note:**

> (disclaimer)
> 
> Androphobia is Louis’ ‘illness’ and is (put simply) the fear of men. The oxford definition is 'An abnormal and persistent fear of men. Sufferers experience anxiety even though they may realise they face no real threat.'
> 
> I don’t claim to be a medical genius and have no real experience or knowledge in this area. The fear is modified for the purpose of this story and my interpretation of how I believe it will suit the plot. Please do not treat this as factual, as though I’m attempting to make it correct, I may be completely wrong. 
> 
> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> Please leave a kudos or comment bc feedback is ❤︎.


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